


in the clear

by Rhovanel



Category: Out of the Woods - Taylor Swift (Music Video)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Gen, Minor Injuries, Outer Space, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24339178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhovanel/pseuds/Rhovanel
Summary: No one has ever beaten the "Woods" simulation. Swift intends to be the first.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13
Collections: Jukebox 2020





	in the clear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merryghoul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryghoul/gifts).



Swift runs.

Over the log, under the branch, around the tree, through the ferns, dodging and ducking as she goes. Around her the trees loom, dark and threatening. She tries not to look at them, keeping her eyes focused ahead of her.

She must get through the woods.

Her heart beats a steady rhythm, matched by the thump of her bare feet hitting the forest floor. Yet underneath the steady thump, she hears the howl of a wolf behind her.

That’s when she makes her first mistake: she turns to look over the shoulder. As she turns, her foot catches in a stray root and she goes flying through the air.

“Oooomph,” she exclaims as she hits the ground. 

The roots begin to curl up around her limbs, wrapping themselves around her wrists and pinning her down. She struggles against them vainly.

“Get up,” she mutters, and with one final tug, her arm slides free. 

Leaping to her feet, she strides forward, but her stance is unsteady and she staggers slightly. At that pause, she feels the breath of the wolves behind her, hot on the back of her shins.

“Get up,” she yells, taking a final leap forward, but it’s too late: the wolf catches her cloak and she falls down into blackness.

*****SIMULATION FAILED*****

Swift tears the headset from her forehead a groan. “Fuck,” she mutters.

****

“Cadet Swift!” 

Swift grits her teeth and quickens her pace slightly. The halls of the Fearless are narrow but unidirectional, and once someone spots you, you have nowhere to hide. 

She slows to a halt with a sigh, turning around slowly to face Commander Fortitude. 

When new recruits join the academy, they choose a virtue they aspire to: courage, loyalty, honour, and so forth. Your name becomes your reputation - for better or worse, depending if you live up to it. She had chosen swiftness, in the aim to rise faster through the ranks and fly faster through the skies than any cadet before. Personally she thinks the names are self-fulfilling prophecies, in that every cadet chooses something just vague enough that they can apply it to any situation, like the horoscopes her aunt used to love to read. 

Fortitude was known for being unflinching in the face of adversity and pain, but he was equally unflinching when it came to the rules.

Commander Stickler would have been more suited. 

“Cadet,” he says, as as he stops in front of her. “The log tells me you have been running the Woods simulation.”

“What of it?” she says, raising her chin.

“What of it sir,” Fortitude replies. 

“Sir,” she says dutifully. 

“And why might you be replaying a basic training module in your spare time?”

“No one has ever beaten it. I intend to be the first.”

“It is not designed to be won, Cadet,” Fortitude says sharply. 

She squares her shoulders. “Yet, sir.”

“Always champing at the bit, Swift,” Fortitude says with a wry smile. “You cannot win the simulation, but if you do not heed the lesson, you can certainly fail it.”

He begins to walk, and she falls into pace beside him. “The Woods simulation is a lesson for all of us: the organic world is a dangerous place that will rise against you. You cannot beat it, and you cannot survive it. You can only flee, as our ancestors fled the dying Earth generations ago.”

“But sir, no one has ever reached the end of the simulation - there must be something at the end of the woods.”

“Must there?”

“In the old stories, the woods are spaces of discovery and treasure, of monsters and…

“Old stories, Swift,” Fortitude says. “We left those behind for a reason.” He pulls a vidscreen from his pocket, pressing a few buttons before handing it to her.

It’s an image of her rank ceremony. She stands on the podium, her bright blue uniform shining under the hangar lights. 

“Your future is bright colours, Cadet. The simulations are blacks and whites of a world long gone. They are a moral lesson - one I believed you had passed.”

There is a note of warning on his face, and she hands the vid screen back. “Yes, sir. Goodnight, sir.”

“Goodnight, Cadet,” Fortitude says, continuing down the corridor.

Fortitude was wrong about the simulation, she thinks. She hadn’t failed it - she just hadn’t won yet.

**** 

Over the log, under the branch, around the tree, through the ferns, over the roots, don’t look back, one foot after the other, Swift runs. She leaps and she slides and as the wolves snatch at her clothes, she throws herself through the portal and into the next landscape.

Each ‘level’ of the simulation models another of Earth’s threatening landscapes: frozen wastelands, burning tundras, sodden, muddy fields. Not everyone makes it through all the levels - most progress just enough to realise that Earth is a hellscape that cannot be saved, nor conquered, not returned to. The Fleet is safe, the Fleet is secure, the Fleet is sanctuary. 

But Swift wants to know what lies at the end. There has to be something at the end, she thinks. There has to be more than just another boring moral.

The wasteland is frozen, and she can feel herself shiver. Temperature changes are foreign to those growing up in the temperature-controlled fleet - most cadets are spooked by the strange feelings of heat and cold, and hit the exit buttons on the medallions they wear around their necks.

“The medallion…” Swift says thoughtfully, slowing to a halt and reaching up to rub it between her fingers. If the medallion is the exit button, then removing it might just keep her in the simulation.

She looks behind her: on one side is a cliff face, on the other, the wolves. It’s a choice between failure and the unknown, so it’s not a choice at all.

“You are the fastest cadet in the history of the Fleet, goddammit,” she says to herself. “Now hurry up and jump.”

As she races towards the edge, she tears the medallion from her neck and flingers it from her neck. As it falls down into the crevasse, she leaps. 

*****SIMULATION FAILED*****

“Damn it all to Earth,” she swears, running a hand through her hair.

She’s surprised to see blood on her fingers.

***

“Twenty stitches, Swift,” Doctor Benevolence says, tearing off her gloves with a sigh. “What were you thinking?”

Swift winces as she touches the bandage on her head. “How was I supposed to know what the medallion did?”

“The medallion is the interface between you and the simulation - you take it away, and your body interprets the signals as if they are physical.”

“No one told us that.” There’s a sulk in her voice, but she doesn’t really care.

“No one has ever needed to be told,” Benevolence says. 

“You know me,” Swift says. “First in line for everything.”

Benevolence shakes her head. “How about being first in line for your bunk tonight?” she says. “Go on, get out of here.”

Swift wants to return to the simulation room - if only she just reached that little bit further - but her head aches, so she returns to her cabin.

Her dreams are full of wolves.

****

Over the log, under the branch, around the tree, through the ferns, over the roots, across the wasteland, over the cliff, through the next portal, Swift slides into a sodden, muddy bog.

The mud is sticky and her feet sink into it, almost like it’s devouring her. Her pace grinds to a halt. She cannot run in such mud.

But, she supposes, neither can the wolves.

She trudges through, her teeth gritted at her slow pace, every staggered step a betrayal to her name. 

“Must…keep…going,” she mutters between laboured breaths, but she can feel herself sinking.

“No,” she groans, as she sinks deeper into the ground. “This can’t be happening. I won’t lose here.”

But the mud envelopes her - her mouth, her ears, her eyes-

*****SIMULATION FAILED*****

“Stupid piece of shit!” Swift yells, flinging the headset across the room and storming out of simulation pod.

****

Over the log, under the branch, around the tree, through the ferns, over the roots, across the wasteland, over the cliff, over the bog, and through the next portal into a scorching wildfire.

Swift doesn’t get two paces before the heat forces her to the ground, embers around her, threatening to set her cloak on-

*****SIMULATION FAILED*****

She puts her head in her hands. She had always thought herself ten steps ahead of her peers, but now, she wonders if she’s always been behind.

Maybe ‘Swift’ is a curse, after all. 

****

In her bunk, she lies on her back and stares at the ceiling, a paper jet in her hand. Paper is a rare resource in the fleet - they make it from the grasses they grow in the oxygen garden - but she steals pieces from the classrooms when she can.

She remembers using paper in her own schooling years - making paper jets to learn the principles of flight, the old techniques that got them through the atmosphere and away from their ruined planet.

Her jets always flew further and faster than anyone else’s. That was the first time she decided that on graduation, she would pick a name for speed.

She watches as her jet flies around her cabin. It always amazed her that such a delicate thing could fly so far with so little effort. 

“Effort,” she says, sitting up on her bed.

She has an idea.

***

She stands in the woods, still as she can. She doesn’t run - not over a log, or under a branch, or across a cliff, or through a bog. She just stands, and waits.

She can feel the roots begin to wind their way over her limbs, but she doesn’t fight them. Instead, she stretches out an arm so they can travel up her body faster. And they lift her, raising her up gently through into the next portal.

She lets the ice run up her hands, forming crystals on her arms.

She lets the mud sluice across her skin, covering her with grime.

She lets the embers fall at her feet, flushing her skin with heat.

She just stops, closes her eyes, and lets herself feel - heat, earth, ice. 

When she opens them, she finds herself on a sandy shore. Over her shoulder, the woods shimmer and fold into themselves. She has never got this far in the simulation. No one has. With a tiny burst of pride, she turns her gaze back to the shore, where a woman stands.

“Took you long enough,” the woman says. “Thought you were meant to be swift.”

“I am,” she says, reaching out a hand to the woman's back.

The woman turns, and Swift takes a step back in surprise. "Are you sure about that?" the woman says.

It's like looking into a mirror. The same face, hair, voice, everything.

Swift stares. "Fucking fantastic," she says. "Was this the whole point? Are you going to give me some moral lesson about believing in myself?"

"Not really," the woman says. "No one's ever made it this far before."

"So what, you've run out of programming?"

"Pretty much. I'm a hack, but they didn't finish me in time."

"Someone hacked the Woods simulation?" Swifts pauses. "So you could only win if you stopped resisting the wilderness...the Gaists?" 

"Bingo," the woman replies.

Swift shakes her head. "The Gaists won't move on from the past. We can only go forward - that's the whole point of the Fleet."

"And did you make it through the Woods by going forward?" the woman asks.

Swift groans. "So I should stop and smell the oxygen garden? Is that the lesson?"

The woman flashes her own, familiar smile back at her. "Just reminding you that you're too clever to swallow Fleet propaganda."

"Or Gaist propaganda," Swift shoots back. She looks at the horizon, so strange and bright compared to the grey walls of the Fleet. But when she turns back to the woman, she's gone, leaving nothing but a rustle of sand in the wind."

Swift lets the wind flow through her hair, ruffling her blue cloak around her. Maybe there is something to be said for standing still, every once in a while, she thinks. And maybe she doesn't always need to be running forward. She can run over, and under, and around, and through.

Maybe that's the lesson, she thinks with a laugh, as the simulation fades around her. Forward is a circle that always leads her back to herself.

The fastest cadet in the history of the Fleet.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Jukebox, merryghoul! I was really taken with your prompt for a story that combined the images from the video with the imagery of the lyrics. This was a lot of fun to write, and I hope you enjoy it.


End file.
